"In American Grammar, Jarvis Givens has offered a new, meticulously detailed, and illuminating account of the origins of American education and the way schooling has served as contested territory for the making of the US citizen and the Republic. This is a superb and indispensable work of history." -- Imani Perry, National Book Award-winning author of South to America and Black in Blues "Spectacular! Exceedingly well-written and brilliantly argued: at a time when schools have become yet another battlefield in the 'Culture War', Jarvis Givens, our pre-eminent scholar of Black Education, has provided us with a thoughtful history that sheds penetrating light on this troubling moment." -- Gerald Horne, author of African Americans & A New History of the USA "Too many of us assume that public education is the story of increasing access to an undeniable American good. But not so fast! As American Grammar demonstrates with brilliance, erudition, and passion, American schooling proved crucial to advancing racial difference and the social domination that accompanied it. Situating figures such as "education president" James Garfield, educator Booker T. Washington, and his own Afro-Choctaw ancestor Susan McCoy, Jarvis Givens offers not only a fresh understanding of American education, but a rigorous exploration of the entanglements of Black and Native pasts. Deeply informed and beautifully written, this is a transformational work, one not to be missed.

" -- Philip Deloria, Author of Playing Indian "In this new origin story of American schooling, Jarvis R. Givens foregrounds Indigenous and Black experiences, which are usually separated and marginalized in the broad narrative of U.S. education. Givens, instead, demonstrates the intertwined nature of Indigenous and Black educational policy and practice, and how integral they were to the creation and maintenance of U.S. educational systems. Combining deep historical research with trenchant analysis and first-person narrative, Givens unearths how the grammars of violence and race have structured our educational landscape.

" -- Christina Snyder, Author of Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson "American Grammar opens powerful portals to African American and Indigenous histories replete with both tensions and possibilities. Through meticulous scholarship--including exploring his own genealogy--Givens has created a primer, a poem, and a call for honest dialogue about the consequences of erasure. This new grammar will provide us with the tools we need to cultivate a collective kinship." -- Maisha T. Winn, President, American Educational Research Association "We learn as much about history from what is absent in its teaching as we do from what is present. In his magisterial new work, Jarvis Givens illuminates the ways in which indigenous and Black American paths through US history have shaped and formed the dominant white educational system, from structural practices that enabled the creation of public schools for white Americans, to the ideology that informed their classrooms. Givens shows that we have schools in the United States in no small part because of the profits earned off of indigenous land dispossession and slavery, and he reveals how the educational curriculum taught in these schools glorifies a supposed white civilizational superiority, in order to delegitimize indigenous and Black resistance. American Grammar is an essential work of American self-understanding.

" -- Jason Stanley, author of Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future.